A NON-WEDDING TURNS INTO A DEFINING MOMENT IN THE BATTLE OF THE SEXES

Katie Couric suggested that castration might be in order. That seemed a little extreme. What criminal outrage had reduced America's bouncy, breakfast-time kid sister to such a primitive fantasy? A serial child-rapist? An AIDS-carrying seducer infecting half of an upstate county's woebegone girls? No. This was serious. This was primal.

Couric was interviewing Nicole Contos, 27, a Manhattan kindergarten teacher who was to have got married to a 35-year-old lawyer, Tasos Michael. Bills for the wedding, to be paid by Nicole's father, a businessman who owns the American Banana Co., were said to be running as high as $125,000.